Privacy Charles Fied Privacy Analysis

A well-entrenched axiom in modern society is a person’s right to keep his or her thoughts private. When this privacy of mind conflicts with another’s privacy of action or speech, however, a compromise must be found. A person’s knowledge about another individual is one such case. The person with knowledge may not want to share he has it, while the other individual wants to know who has information about her. Charles Fried in his essay “Privacy” suggests these desires for privacy stem from the recognition that being able to keep things private gives significance to sharing them (Fried 484). To Fried, choosing to share information is the foundation of any relationship (Fried 480-481). In contrast to Fried’s focus on the individual’s basic right

and need for privacy, Richard A. Posner views privacy in purely sociological terms. He argues in “Privacy, Secrecy, and Reputation” that privacy is simply a “cultural artifact,” not “an innate human need” (Posner 6). Instead, Posner says that the value of privacy is in its ability to help maximize society’s economic potential (Posner 2-3). In the end, synthesizing Fried’s and Posner’s differing goals for privacy will show that the best way to protect both privacy of knowledge and privacy of actions is for people to have access to what information is known about them, but not who knows it.
The most basic case of an individual being interested to know what information others have is knowing which actions are private and which actions others may be able to view.

As Fried points out, if all actions were considered public, “fear of disapproval or retaliation” might prevent people from doing things they would otherwise do (Fried 484). To build on this point, the true privacy of those actions is irrelevant if the potential actor does not know how much privacy he has; he would be forced to assume he has none. Only by knowing what actions he performs will be made public can a person be free to

act.
Not everyone, however, has the right to unmonitored interactions. Charles Fried addresses the case of a parolee who as a condition of release must be fitted with a microphone, such that his parole officer may hear his every word and action (Fried 477). Based on Posner, one would assume that this poses no fundamental problem; the community benefits from not having to pay for another prisoner in jail, but it wants to eliminate the risk of the parolee causing problems. Thus, the lack of privacy is better for the economy of the society than either jail or lack of monitoring. Fried, however, adds another dimension: the individual should be given a chance to earn back trust, which cannot happen without the possibility of breaking trust (Fried 491-493). For example, Fried says, a parolee can never be trusted by his boss with money, because the parolee’s officer would know if he broke that trust (Fried 491).
At this point, therefore, a second level of knowledge about what information others have must come into play.

The inmate not only must know what could be known about him—that he is being monitored—he also must know who would know this. According to Fried’s own definition, trust is the “reliance on a disposition … to deal fairly with others” (Fried 481). Based on this, if the boss has no knowledge his employee is being watched—is relying on the parolee’s character—he trusts him. Consequently, the parolee can feel trusted, but only if he knows who has the information that he is monitored. This resolves Posner’s requirement that societal benefit be maximized, while also taking into account Fried’s need for individual

rights.
At this point, however, the privacy of the person who has information could be endangered. In a study by Peter Bae Brandtzaeg, et al titled “Too many Facebook Friends,” a participant noted that he would not want others to know he was looking at their pages, and he himself would “think quite a lot” about someone who had visited his (Brandtzaeg 1021). If Facebook users believed others could know what they had found out about another person, they would peruse Facebook less. In this case, the economic goals of Posner and Fried’s humanistic ones again align nicely. As an ad-supported platform, Facebook’s value is increased the longer a person stays on the website—and thus the more they look at what others have posted. Since protecting a person’s privacy about what they have seen is vital to increasing Facebook’s economic potential, Posner would say this privacy is paramount. Similarly, Fried’s arguments also support privacy, in that it increases the amount of information a person can share to further a relationship.
The privacy of the viewer, however, must be tempered by the privacy of the information provider. With Fried’s analysis of privacy, the dilemma is simple. Since privacy is vital to relationships, and a necessary quality of that is the ability to “maintain degrees of intimacy,” deciding who gets what information (Fried 485). Without the ability to know who will have access to information posted, the control Fried mandates is lacking. In this case, though, Posner too must acknowledge the importance of privacy, albeit for a much more utilitarian reason. According to Brandtzaeg et al, when people are “exposed to increased visibility or surveillance,” they are more likely to conform to the group, less likely to act in a different or novel way (Brandtzaeg 1011). As noted above, when a person does not know who is viewing his actions, he will likely exhibit a similar tendency to censor himself. This, in turn, results in less time on Facebook for a poster and less content for a viewer to see, limiting his own time on the site. Both of these reduce the economic value provided to Facebook.
Whether the privacy of the poster or the viewer is compromised, the economic value to the website would be lowered, supporting neither Fried’s nor Posner’s ideals. When looking at competing values, Fried noted summation that “social institutions” must provide each person “maximum liberty compatible with a like liberty for all” (Fried 478). Privacy, then, like other liberties, can be limited to be compatible with others’ right to privacy. In this case, the solution is to provide each side with limited knowledge and privacy. The poster may know who can see what he posts, and can then estimate the likelihood that others will see it but will not know who in fact has seen it. The viewer, on the other hand, maintains anonymity in what he has seen and knows.
It is not enough for people to be aware of what information about them can be known, but knowing who exactly has that information infringes upon the other’s privacy and can affect economic growth. Therefore, the middle ground for both Posner and Fried is for people to be aware of who has access to certain information, but not whether they have definitely obtained that information. While Posner’s focus on society and Fried’s emphasis on the individual seem irreconcilable, with creativity and small sacrifices one ach side, the major goals of each can be met.